The knowledge of our genetic code and the technical tools to use it to our own advantage may inspire fear; it threatens the human race’s natural evolution. The consequences of these new technologies are extremely relevant, but are mostly not threatening if regulated. However, the changing science and society will need the moral tools to navigate this uncharted territory.
Do you wear glasses? I do. I’m also willing to bet that you know several people who do too. In fact around half of the British population is short-sighted1. Is there something strange about the fact that a significant proportion of people have to wear glasses in order to see properly? Are humans the only ones that suffer from this problem? The answer to this last question is almost certainly ‘yes’, and the reason why is Darwin’s.
The green tide, a tide that was swelling just a few months ago, seems to have turned. This has happened before; the “greening of America1” in the late sixties, died from the economical realities of the oil shock. The public attention moves in waves, and an issue can go from paramount to naught in only a few weeks. When an issue rides on the top of the wave, it rakes in unnecessary and promises that should not be realized in the long term. The public faith in ethanol in 2007, for example, did not balance with the other needs of the human environment, causing basic food prices to rise worldwide.
Israel’s bombing and occupation of Gaza has dominated the headlines since December 27. What escaped the headlines and was obscured from the public eye was Israel’s deportation of Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur, appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council, just a week before the bombing started.
Here I intend to examine some of the most fundamental assumptions of science. One of the greatest human achievements in history was the realisation that the world and its natural phenomena can be explained. At some point in history almost all of existence must have had only a supernatural explanation. The world was seen as [...]
